No thanks for these prices
It’s Halloween, and this year for Halloween what we got was rain. And thus only a total of five trick-or-treaters. I took my dogs out for a walk in that rain and they weren’t happy about it either.
So instead of the joy of getting up every couple of minutes and oohing and aahing over the clever costumes showing up at my front door and trying to scare small children, I set about preparing for the final Thanksgiving in my current house. Last year I cooked everything from scratch, including several exotic sides, but while that was certainly a triumph, it was also an ordeal. I’ve already got enough going on this year, as related earlier, so I figured I’d preorder a “Fully Prepared Holiday Meal,” so that’s what I started to do.
Or, at least, tried to.
Tried to because very quickly I saw that things are very very different than where they were last year. Instant sticker shock.
Yes, I’ve grown accustomed to the shrinkflation in chewing gum. The flavor I like, Trident Mint Bliss, once upon a time had 20 sticks in its little case, in two rows of 10. Then it became 16 sticks. Last night, opening a new pack while my wife and I were waiting for a play to start, I pointed out to her that it now contains seven sticks in each row. That’s 14. Down from 20. “You’re kidding!” she gasped, taking a look for herself.
One night last month after leaving the gym, I had a hankering for some cereal. I’m not normally a cereal eater, but I do have decades of buying cereal for my children. This right here put a stop to my hankering.
Yes, that’s $8.49 for a box of cereal. Did I have $8.49? Sure. But was I going to spend it on what’s mostly a box of air? No.
So of course I drove over to another supermarket and found this, but it was still beyond the price I was willing to pay. And meanwhile I’d probably spent a dollar’s worth of gasoline.
But it turned out that my biggest shock would wait until tonight.
Because tonight, I discovered that the Fully Prepared Holiday Meal that I was fully prepared to preorder and heat up and serve is no longer the Fully Prepared Holiday Meal I remember. It used to cost $89 and come with
And if I’m not mistaken, the turkey is smaller. This one, they say, serves 6. Well, the one I bought two years served eight and we had leftovers. So I would have to buy two of these, or add a beef roast or something, and that’s going to further drive up the price.
- a turkey
- a cannister of gravy
- stuffing
- mashed potatoes
- a spinach casserole
- a large side dish of green beans
- a tub of cranberry sauce
- and rolls
Now it’s $129.99 (need those 99 cents!), and it comes with the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, the gravy, the cranberry sauce… and that’s it. No casserole, no green beans, no rolls.
So then I started looking for other places to order a Fully Prepared Holiday Meal. The pricing on those was alarming, with most running $300-$400. I’m sorely tempted to get the Smoked Turkey Combo from a barbecue place near me, but I’m not sure my guests are going to like the sides (collard greens, sweet potato mash, and cornbread stuffing). At least the turkey will be large enough.
I can’t see shelling out $350 for a Fully Prepared Holiday Meal when instead I could cook it all up myself while day drinking. But I may change my mind just before the day, being back from two weeks overseas and doing things like riding camels in one country and dodging rioters in the other. We’ll have to see.