August 18, 2005

• At some point in everyone’s life, especially in med school for those of
  us to whom debt is not only a fact of life but  a lover and a
  friend, the dollar store has been a lifesaver. It could have been when you were in college and needed a cheap
  place to buy soap, shampoo or ramen. It could have been when you were
  out of a job and needed to stretch your money. Or it could have been the
  time you were being a skinflinty bastard and decided that $3.50 for a
  Mother’s Day card was just too damn high. Face it: If it weren’t for dollar
  stores, we would be hungry, dirty wretches whose guts our mothers would
  hate.

  But guess what folks!The dollar store or 99 cent store
  or whatever the one near you is has more than just soap and ramen.
  There’s quite a range of things you obtain, from batteries to party
  supplies to kitchen gadgets. The quality of the items ranges quite a
  bit but everything is pretty much the same price.

  Since most dollar stores sell some form of food as well,
  can the same thing be said about their edibles? Can a person actually
  make a reasonable meal out of food bought at a dollar store?

  Well folks with that in mind, I bring you the next in the series of How to Become more like The Josh and present

  How to Eat at the dollar store

  Now I have plenty of loan money for groceries, but in
  order to prepare for when i am eventually an indentured servant (pardon
  me i meant to say “resident”) I decided to see if it would be possible
  to make a  halfway decent meal from ingredients purchased only at
  my local (relatively) cheapie stores. Turns out i wont die of
  malnutrition or scurvy, if i am careful. So follow these tips, and you
  too can have an adequate meal on a budget that stretches further than
  Mr. Fantastic.

  #1. Go To More Than One Store.

  

  One of the reasons why dollar stores have the ability to sell things
  so cheaply is that they buy manufacturer over-runs and discontinued
  items, usually in large quantities. So this means that if a particular
  store finds a large quantity of, say, unsold pickled baboon hearts,
  there’s a 90 percent chance the store is going to snap them up,
  figuring that someone will buy them eventually. Of course, this means
  that different dollar stores (or 99-cent stores,or dollar trees or
  chain supermarket dumpsters, if you are in the mood to shave off even
  more pennies) find different lots of merchandise. So, if you’re in the
  mood for something and one store doesn’t have it, look at another store.

  #2. Don’t Be Afraid To Buy In Bulk
  

  Just as different stores will have different products, the same can
  be said of the selection in the same store over time; the roster of
  brands and products is not static. So, if you’ve been liking a
  particular type of juice or canned soup that you’ve been seeing at your
  local dollar store, snap up a few of them, since they may not be there
  next time. It’s not like you’re spending five bucks a can, Scrooge
  McDuck.

  #3. Don’t Expect To Regularly See Name Brands.

  

  It’s not that the store doesn’t ever have name brands. In the past I have seen Bumble-Bee Chicken Salad and a bottle
  of Hunt’s BBQ sauce (a squeeze bottle, no less!). When I cruised through
  my local store, I also saw Heinz ketchup! But, for
  the most part, you’re not going to see many recognizable names on the
  products you’re perusing.

   It’s not quite the same as in Repo Man,
  when everything Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton consumed had a plain
  white label that simply stated the contents inside (“Beer”,
  “Potato Chips”, etc.), but it’s pretty damn close. Looking for
  some Hamburger Helper? You’ll get “Hamburger Dinner.” Craving
  some Chicken of the Sea? You’ll get “Tuna from the Ocean.” Whoever Chef Karlin is, he needs to fire his PR people,
  because Emeril, Sylvia and Wolfgang Puck are all kicking his ass.

  #4. Not Every $1 Item Is A Bargain.

  

  Think about it for a second. If you can get name brand tuna
  for 69 cents at the supermarket, why the hell would you want to buy “Tuna from the Ocean”
  for a buck? Same goes with pasta; Barilla, some of the best dried pasta
  out there, often goes on sale at your local supermarket for a dollar.
  If you’re buying “Bob’s Vermicelli” at the dollar store for
  a full dollar, you’re getting ripped off big time.

  In cases like these, look for signs that say “2 for $1″ or,
  better yet, “20 for $1.” At least that way, you’re assured that
  you’re getting something for less than you would if you just shopped at
  the local supermarket.

  #5. Embrace The Vegetarian Lifestyle.

  

  Your edible meat choices at the dollar store pretty much come down to
  tuna, tuna and tuna. Sure, there are other options, but they consist of
  meat whose origin, both with regards to location on the planet and on
  the animal itself, is questionable.

  What should you not buy? Anything like the pic above. Knowing how crummy the meat is in a homemade
  beef stew (it’s supposed to be tough, cheap meat that softens up over
  the hours it’s simmering in the stew), I can’t imagine what kind of chicken
  meat is of such low quality that it only is suitable for canned stew. I can only wonder what kind of unpleasantness
  lurks just under that lid.

  #6 Stay Well Hydrated

  Make sure you have a lot of water handy; none of this
  food could be so well preserved without tons and tons of salt. The canned
  chicken stew alone provides over 2,000 mg of sodium — more than 80 percent
  of your daily requirement — over two fairly small servings So watch your canned food intake unless youI can afford
  the increased medical coverage needed to eat it.

  So there you have it…a few well planned out trips and you can
  have lots of salads, occasional stews and if your dollar store has soy
  sauce you can have every poor students easy nutrition meal: stir fry

  Hopefully that helps… and this how to guide wasn’t too bad…anyone
  out there, feel free to comment with other things you may want to know
  how to do, and I will do my best to come up with a handy list

  -J

  • 1:32 am
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