...Was an album by Frank Zappa, but that's not important right now. Casa del Yobbo has undergone regime change recently with Your Correspondent being installed as Puppet El Presidente (or at least stay-at-home-Dad and house husband by appointment), which has resulted in a lot of changes round these parts. Mostly money-related. Mostly lack-of-money-related, in point of fact. But that's all good, because as it turns out, Your Correspondent is secretly a cheap bastard, and has quite enjoyed busting out his secret squirrel cheap bastard skillset.
There is an art intringent to being a cheap bastard. The art is in being able to find quality products, particularly in the realm of non-core indulgences, which you can live with, in lieu of (a) going broke-ass broke buying your Usual Preferred Brands or (b) actually having to give up coffee or beer, because FUCK THAT SHIT.
The engaging challenge in this process is finding stuff which isn't abject fucking slop. F'rinstance, drinkable beer around the $30 a carton mark. As discussed previously in these pages, in the previous millennium where this critical pricepoint was nearer $20 a case, Your Correspondent's old man used to fill his fridge with the likes of Tooheys Red and Reschs Real, presumably to prevent Your Correspondent from pilfering it. This congenital cheapness is presumably Y-linked; I object to having to pay more than ten bucks for a bottle of wine, which in the current wine-glut NZ market involves no particular hardship.
The commodity price for beer is more immune to supply-and-demand fluctuations, sadly. Not to the point of justifying Real or Red, of course. Unless you absolutely, positively, need to clean the barbeque. My weekend go-to has become Haagen, a NZ-brewed Eurolager ripoff which manages to squeeze a remarkable amount of flavour into a $15-a-dozen product. The NZ beer market being what it is (ie cheap), you can often pick up genuine imported Eurolagers like Heineken around the $40-a-case mark. For special occasions, like. Months with a vowel in the month.
Coffee's another indispensible expenditure, for sanity at least. Found out this week that the Caffe Aurora stuff I'd always been fairly sniffy about was actually Vittoria's 'second label'. At half the price, it's not half the quality, and it's still better than Blend fucking 43 or those nasty pod-based extractions of arse.
Food costs money, which is an unfortunate state of affairs. However as discussed at Mother Focaccia today, the cold climate chef's secret weapon, the slow cooker, has an inordinate ability to turn dirt-cheap cuts of meat into glorious flavour-infused WIN. Buy one. Now.
All these incremental adjustments mean your family can continue to maintain a high standard of living on a single income, while still being able to afford the important things which make a difference to your life. Like Sky Sports.
The Doctor is OUT.
1 comment:
I sometimes find I'm short of the necessary folding and need to substitute cleanskin wines for the labelled stuff. A few times this has led to major win and generally the stuff is drinkable. Same can't be said for cheap beer. My fallback positions lie with Reschs Pilsener, Tooheys Old or whatever Euro lager is on special. Food is much easier. The cheap cuts can be braised, mince can have all sorts of yum added and as you suggested at MF, bacon bits are cheap and very useful. Tally Ho old chap and keep that drinking economy balanced.
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