At Least I Didn’t Make Him Lick The Bowl.

Tonight I made my sixteen-year-old son J finish some chips and dip. He said he was finished, but I begged to differ.

Normally I don’t police his meals, really. One of the benefits of having teenaged boys in the house is that they don’t need to be coerced to eat. I would even venture to say that the lack of need for Jim and me to be directly involved with making sure they eat their vegetables (they do) or try new things (they do) almost makes up for the fact that they eat us out of house and home, as the saying goes. Almost.

The reason I stepped in to save the half-teaspoon of dip from the garbage?

One word.

Sausage.

You see, I made this excellent (but beyond unhealthy) dip last night: it’s a family favorite. The ingredients are simple: Rotel diced tomatoes, cream cheese, and turkey Italian sausage.

Normally I get the sausage at my regular grocery store, but recently my sister and I bought into one of those group deals for the store that’s called, well, let’s say “Schmole Schmoods”. We drove over there yesterday with the $20 vouchers that we paid $10 for, and set out with our small list of items we needed to complete a couple of dinners on our meal plan, sausage being one of them.

We went to the meat counter and I noticed that the sausage was $5.99 per pound. They make it in the store, and of course it’s very, very fresh. It looked great! I asked the guy behind the counter for five links, which is the amount that comes in the styrofoam package I usually get.

He piled the links on a piece of coated paper on top of the scale, and I gasped a little bit when I realized that what I had asked for weighed around a pound and a half.

It was more than nine dollars worth of sausage.

Um, wowzers?

Let me say that I LOVE Schmole Schmoods. I completely respect their commitment to selling quality foods and understand that the quality food you find there is, naturally, priced higher than that which you can buy at a “regular” grocery store.

However, um, nine dollars for sausage?

That’s not a price I would feel comfortable paying on a regular basis, nor is the six dollars for a store-brand gallon of milk (which I did not buy).

So you can imagine my dismay when J walked into the kitchen tonight with a Barbie-sized amount of dip left in his bowl, intending to throw it out. I said, “That’s, like, two bucks worth of sausage in there! (not really.) EAT IT.”

And he did. I hope he really, really enjoyed it, because we’re going back to our regular turkey Italian sausage from the regular grocery store the next time I make that recipe.

6 Comments

  • Lisa

    Melisa, I feel your pain. Schmole Schmoods is a once-a-week shop for me now because I can get nitrate-free turkey for G’s lunches, organic chicken and turkey for our dinners, and odd items like kelp noodles that I haven’t found elsewhere. It is always shocking when I get to the register but I’m obsessed with the way they do things. I look at it this way: If we went out to eat, it would STILL be more expensive than the $15 worth of organic turkey I just made… Which usually lasts us TWO dinners. But it still hurts. Every time. Just ask my AMEX. But wait until it stops giggling.

  • Mom24@4evermom

    I love Schmole Schmoods and shop regularly there, but every once in a while Holy Smokes! does the sticker shop kill me. Last night I saw in the parking lot and just blinked at the total on my receipt trying to figure out how in the world it gad gotten to that! I must confess I don’t even blink any more at the $6.38 for a gallon of milk, Snowville is so worth it to me and my family.

    The key to Whole Foods is that if you want to spend $5 on sausage, that’s what you get and you use less in your recipe. J may not thank you for it though. 🙂

  • tracey - justanothermommy

    NEver been in a Whole Foods. Or Schmole Schmoods, for that matter. Expensive food and me don’t get along very well. I can’t enjoy it if it costs too much. Really! I end up obsessing over every little bite (just like the sausage).

  • DaddysFishBowl

    Haha good for you, can’t just throw away high quality meat like that, lol! Just tonight I had to force the little guy to eat his dinner & it’s definitely not a fun experience. At least you gave me hope that in a few yrs this practice won’t be needed. The eating out of house & home is a bit scary though.

  • Heather

    You would not believe how expensive it is to shop for (even just) 2 people when your only option is to eat healthy. Makes me long for the days when I could grab a double cheeseburger for $1, no joke.