I didn’t feel like writing too long of a post today. Shoulder acting up. What to do? Why, put up something controversial and let everyone else write the post for me of course. Via the comments.

No, I know it’s not exactly controversial. But people tend to either think it’s the food of the gods for college kids and cheap eaters, or it’s an unpalatable, salty disgrace that has less nutritional value than marshy sawdust. I think the true answer may be a surprising combination of those two opposites…

This particular variety is called “Creamy Chicken Ramen”. I’m not even going to talk about the ramen; it’s the same in every package. Just the seasoning packet changes. If by “creamy chicken” they mean “original chicken flavoring plus random dairy solids” then this is a pretty good description of how it tasted.

You know, it’s sort of surprising that we haven’t featured Instant Ramen here at Cheap Eats as of yet (we’ve only talked about “real” ramen). I was sort of saving it for a full-featured spread whereby I went and tasted all the different possible varieties. I know there’s books that have been written exclusively about Instant Ramen.

But I don’t think that’s gonna happen, since ramen is sort of off limits for me for the time being. What? A Cheap Eater dieting? Sorta. Perhaps more later in the month on that.

In any case, my own opinion of instant ramen in general is that it’s a decent staple to have around for people on a budget, BUT you absolutely cannot eat this stuff every day. For that matter, I never eat it as a meal but only as a snack. I also discard the cooking water after making the noodles and then add fresh hot water with only 1/2 the seasoning packet.

How about you?

Price: $0.15
Found At: Ralph’s
Cheap Eats Score: 5/10

“I Got The Mott’s!”

I used to hear this refrain on a daily basis in high school. Cribbed from one of their commercials, this line was a favorite of a friend who used to have little cups of Mott’s Applesauce in his brown bag lunches. Yeah, remember when people used to actually bring lunch to school? I did it all through grade school, high school, and even in college (though by that time, the actual brown bag was a reusable rucksack.)

I remember that people with the right types of desirable snacks did some pretty brisk business in the School Yard Lunch Index. But I don’t think applesauce was one of those desireables…

Anyhow, for some reason or another, I felt nostalgic for those brown bag days so I decided to pick up some applesauce. Interestingly, I was going to shoot for generic store brand but it turns out that the Mott’s name brand Applesauce was cheaper!

There ain’t much “sexy” in applesauce (unless your bedroom habits are weirder than fiction). I don’t know too many people who come home from work and go, “All RIGHT! I got that job promotion! Now, I’m going to have me a bowl of applesauce.”

Still, it was sort of pleasant to just have a bowl of the stuff. At the below price of $2.50 for 3 friggin pounds of it, I would wager it’d last for quite awhile. Unless, of course, you ARE the type of person to come home every day and eat a bowl of it.

As far as taste goes, it’s pretty much just like eating an apple that’s been peeled and pureed in a blender. The Mott’s version tastes pretty decent, sort of like drinking plain old apple juice with a ton of pulp in it. Hm… that’s got me thinking if it isn’t possible to make your own applesauce. Anybody try it?

I haven’t done this myself, but I know you can use applesauce in all sorts of other applications: dessert topping, baking addititive, and of course the ever-popular Porkchops and Applesauce made famous by an utterance in The Brady Bunch.

Price: $2.50 for 3 lb. jar
Found At: Albertson’s
Cheap Eats Score: 6/10

I completely goofed and forgot to post this yesterday. I wanted you to all get fair warning about picking up a FREE Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Cone. Yep, it’s that time of year already.

They’re celebrating 28 years of making their ice cream. The shops should all be open from 12-8pm. I actually have never partaken in this yearly ritual, though I know there are quite a few people who do. It hasn’t been hot enough here lately to get ice cream, but then again I guess who needs a heat wave to enjoy some?

Make sure to check which Ben & Jerry’s stores are actually participating in this giveaway. There are definitely more than a few, say in California where I live, which aren’t giving it away. I looked and for the most part, it’s mostly those which are in amusement parks or baseball stadiums. Yeah, if they honored the giveaway in a stadium full of people they’d go bankrupt.

Price: Free Ice Cream Cone
At: Ben & Jerry’s
Cheap Eats Score: 10/10

Happy Easter everyone! To celebrate this holiday, I would like to call attention to that time honored tradition that is being served on Sunday dinner tables across the nation at this very moment. I’m talking, of course, about… Frito Pie!

Oh I kid you not. Ever since I was reminded about Frito Pie on an episode of King of the Hill, I’d been wanting to try it. Yep, I had never had this delicacy before… you would have expected it to make an appearance on Cheap Eats sooner. But I never had the correct combination of required ingredients from the admittedly simple recipe.

So I went to the grocery store a week back with the express purpose of buying all the ingredients. It wasn’t hard, and luckily Fritos were on sale. $1.25 for a 10 ounce bag.

A word on Fritos… to this day, they’ve stuck with the basic ingredients. It is just Corn, Corn Oil and Salt. That’s it. At least for their original flavor. There are tons of different varieties including Chili and Cheese and Lime and Chile as well as all sorts of shapes like Scoops and Twists.

Side note: I saw this “survival” type show on Discovery where the guy took along a couple of Fritos (not a bag but like 4-5 chips). He didn’t eat them though… instead he used the oil in them as fuel to help get his fire going to cook his Desert Rat. Or is that Dessert Rat. Yum.

Back to the pie. So apparently, this is a “tradition” from Texas which isn’t a stretch since Frito-Lay is based there. Frito-Lay is pretty serious about the usage of their chips in pies… they even have a website devoted just to Frito Pie. The recipe I used is just a basic one, but I’d think even with other additions it would come in under $3 for a good sized pie.

Frito Pie

1 can chili (homemade OK too) — $0.99
1 1/2 cups fritos - $0.45
1 cup shredded cheese — $0.25
1/3 cup chopped onion — $0.20
optional parsley sprig — negligible

Total: $1.89

Preheat the oven to 350°F or so. Spread out about 1/2 the chips on the bottom of a glass pie plate dish or baking dish. Spread about 1/2 the onion and half the cheese on the Fritos. Top with all the chili. Then put the remaining cheese, onion, and Fritos on top of that.

Bake it for about 17-20 minutes and serve it hot. Instant trailer cuisine.

Continue reading “All I Want For Easter Is Frito Pie” …

Hello ye Cheap Eaters. Thank you to everyone who wrote to express concern about my shoulder. It is a bit better now that I’m off the laptop, but still very bothersome… enough to keep me from posting more than twice a week.

Anyhow, here’s a short one for you today: Cheddar Jalapeno Cheetos. Popular name brand snacks don’t go over so well at Cheap Eats sometimes. They’re just so unnecessary and expensive unless you can hit a sale at the grocery store and buy it in bulk. These tiny bags weight just 2 3/4 ounces and cost 99 cents. Doesn’t sound like Cheap Eats to me.

But wait TV viewers, there’s more. Did you know that along with this bag of cheesy snacks you also get an honest to goodness SERENADE? That’s right, it’s printed on the back of the package. What a bone-us. I’ll reprint it here for your enjoyment:

A Serenade to Cheetos Crunchy Cheddar Jalapeno Snacks
By: Chester Cheetah

I’ve travelled this country
And there’s one thing I’ve found,
Cheesy Snacks are the best around!!

Now, I’ve added JALAPENO to the mix!
The perfect combination to get your SNACKIN’ Fix!

A Hot New Flavor that you’ll
Be sure to savor!

So round up a bag of your own
and soon you’ll see you’re not alone!

Continue reading “Cheddar Jalapeno Cheetos” …

You may have to avert your gaze from the bag of Doritos in order to prevent burning holes in your retinas. Boy, the color of the packaging is fiery. This is actually the original Nacho Cheese flavor of Doritos but I almost thought I had bought a “Flaming” variety. I know the design isn’t super new but I saw it at Target the other day and decided to pick it up because it was fairly cheap at $2 as far as name-brand chips go. Plus, I had a gift card, so it turned out free…

The new packaging for Doritos (I’m sure it’s new because of the words “New Look, Same Great Taste” are featured prominently on the front) basically screams out shiny red and orange colors “Hey, buy me, you lame ass shopper!” It worked on me I guess, but that was because I hadn’t seen this bag design before. I sort of liked the old school Doritos bag with the see through packaging and slightly less seizure-inducing colors. It was just more friendly.

An interesting note: I’ve been trying to figure out what that “fire-squiggle” on the front is. The best I can come up with is that it’s supposed to represent your EKG reading just before your heart stops from eating too many chips. Or maybe it’s a subliminal chicken scrawl that is beaming the message, “It’s OK to have orange colored, stinky-sock odor fingertips while you’re eating Doritos.”

Yep, Doritos, Cheetos and all those deeelicious “cheese-powder” snacks have that habit of distributing unwanted orange dust on your fingers. I have tried eating Doritos with a spoon and also with chopsticks, but it’s just not the same. Chip bags are funny in that the more you eat and the lower the level of chips in the bag drops, the more orange powder you tend to get all over your hands. This is because you have to reach deeper into the bag to grab chips. One way to minimize cheese powder on your hands is to cut the top of the bag clean off with scissors once you get deep enough into the bag.

Another method (I haven’t yet tried this) is to open a new bag to take the excess air out, seal it up and then take a rock and pound the hell out of the chips. Then, pour it into a cereal bowl and eat it with a spoon. This seems promising in a ghetto sort of way, but I can’t bring myself to waste a bag testing it.

Continue reading “New Doritos Bag” …

Well, I decided to get in one more quickie review before the year is up. May I present Tootsie Pops Miniatures.

You heard right. MINIATURE Tootsie Pops… what will those wizards at Tootsie Pop think up next? I was at Sav-Ons the other day (a common Cheap Eats store hangout) when we saw this enormous bag of 300 Tootsie Pops for about 6 bucks. Hm… is that really 2 cents a piece? Not bad. But then again these are Miniatures.

Sorry, I didn’t get a chance to take a pic of the actual bag as it was pretty torn up from me attacking it to get the tootsie pops out of it. So anyhow, as advertised these are fairly small, maybe 1/2 the size of a normal tootsie pop. I wonder how many licks it takes to get to the center of the miniatures… I know they did many studies on them before.

Here is what is said on the back of the bag:

America’s favorite lollipop is now available in miniature! Tootsie Pop Miniatures feature that great Tootsie Roll center and familiar flavors that kids have loved since 1931! And the fun, miniature size is perfect for give-aways and rewarding life’s little accomplishments.

Leave it to them to sum up all of your life’s accomplishments in a piece of candy.

There are 5 flavors in the bag: Grape, Cherry, Raspberry, Orange and Chocolate. My least favorite is the Chocolate… the taste of the “chocolate” hard candy is downright nasty. i don’t know why they don’t replace this one with just about any other flavor: lime, kiwi, chicken, beef, whatever. Anything else would be better. My favorites are the Grape and Raspberry… these guys are fairly sour which for some reason goes really well with the tootsie pop center.

Interestingly, most of the billions of people that I offered a miniature tootsie pop to actually had not heard about them making the small sizes before and were mighty intrigued. This almost distracted me enough from the slightly chalky taste of the outside of nearly every one of these pops. It’s sort of that texture where hard candy has been left out for too long. You have to sort of get through that weird yucky exterior texture before enjoying anything. Because the pops outer hard candy shell is so thin on these miniatures, by that time you’ve only got about 5 minutes of hard candy before you get to the center.

I must say that the white cardboard sticks that these are impaled on can be pulled out pretty easily out of the tootsie. I actually found them easier to eat by pulling out the stick immediately. I put the pop in my mouth, closed my teeth on the end and yanked the stick out. Hard on your teeth though.

A lot of people don’t like the combination of hard candy and the chocolate tootsie roll center, but I’ve grown quite addicted to it. Mind you, I’ve had about 55 of these gems (not in a row thankfully) and there are still about 150 left in the bag. The “chocolate” is sort of pasty but at least a little bit tasty. It sure does stick in your teeth though.

Price: about $6 for 300 pops
Bought at: Sav-ons
Cheap Eats Score: 5/10