Money, food & wine

Hah- alternate title: hubby's favorite things.....................

Well, Tuesday night with a few loud pops and a sudden dimming of all the lights in our house, our A/C decided to completely bust. Burnt up from the inside or something - either way no way around it, time for a new A/C.


At least it let me bring up the long postponed project of the hubby and I finally trying to create a budget of sorts. I've been wanting to with the girls to see how much (even "if") we save a month or where we could cut costs. So with having to purchase a whole new cooling / heating deal, good time to figure that out.


So in my online research ('cause what else is there to do on a 5 minute lunch break) I came across via MSN a blog post on cutting down when eating out which caught my eye.
(and anti-plagarist I am I even emailed the blog-writer to see if it's okay to post and link to his blog)


From Casual Kitchen

A second strategy is to buy the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu. Not only is it almost always a legitimate bargain, it also reveals one of the most clever profit-maximization techniques used in restaurants today.What exactly is this technique? Well, have you ever bought the second cheapest bottle of wine on the wine list? I sure have, but since doing the research for this article, I won't do it any more. Remember, diners resist buying the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu--after all, that would be cheap, wouldn't it? So restaurants, banking on this tendency among their customers, do a clever bait and switch: they take an inexpensive wine, mark it up massively, and sell it as the second cheapest item on the wine list. The restaurant makes a ton of profit on what seems like a bargain, and you spend more money that you should have on a wine that's overpriced.

Guilty............. Not that I refrain from the cheapest bottle not to look cheap, but the cheapest bottle has to be bad wine, right? Guess not........... Ugh, that's what I usually do, sucker I am. But how brilliant of a marketing strategy. Makes total sense too. I mean we all know alcohol has quite a markup in general but still............


Bad part is, since we tend to drink quite a lot of wine here or there, we tend to know most wines on the average wine list, and what those would cost at a local grocery store or what have you. I'd almost rather pick an unknown and not know the markup vs. ordering a bottle knowing exactly how much I'm "overspending." At least now I'll just go with the cheapest. If you read more wine posts on this blog, turns out in blind tastings, most people can't tell a difference anyway. I'm tempted to try that out. Hubby's brother and sister-in-law like to drink a particular wine (pinot grigio / chardonnay combo) that costs under $3. I think it tastes horrid, but now I''m wondering if maybe at least partially my mind was made up based on knowing where they bought it and the cost. Hmmm.............


As for food, guess for my budget I'll kiss Starbucks goodbye. And hubby can do the same for white castle hamburgers. I'm not the cook between us (obvious statement for those who know me) so hubby can work on how to cut down on our food costs. He also has the idea on trying to become a food critic since that's usually his role whenever we got out to eat. Not sure where he could start but sounds interesting as far as a venture.


But at least for tonight, we're really helping the budget: free wine (I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing, but seems most family members this year decided to buy me wine for my 30th birthday. And free wine usually tastes pretty damn good.)


And for the obligatory kid shot: Audrey and her play-mat







I'm having fun with the new camera - good zoom function







(aw cute isn't it? Ha - they're really cute when they ate $30 worth of flowers when we were trying to sell our last house.............)