August 22, 2008

  • I deny no one their fair profit, but mercy Maud....!

    Was just at SuperTarget and saw this new offering:

    Slow_cooker

    Almost five bucks but the purchaser is expected to provide ground beef and tomatoes for the chili, and chicken and cream of chicken soup for the chicken and rice meal?

    What, precisely, is it that is left for the package to provide?  Some seasonings and perhaps beans for the chili, and rice for the other?

    $4.89 strikes me as awfully pricey for that. 

Comments (6)

  • Oh, but they're in such a pretty package! :hammer: That is outrageous! They're preying on the hurried and harried.

  • That's what I think. Now to be painfully honest, there's an Archer Farms Curry packaged thing I like, which goes for $2.49 and includes jasmine rice and the curry sauce mix. I've simply never found another recipe we enjoy as well, so I pop for it.

    But this stuff is almost twice that much. :o h-no:

  • And "8 minutes prep time" is a selling point for a slow cooker meal? What, if you don't buy the pre-packaged stuff, it takes FIFTEEN because you have to chops a few veggies yourself?

    Nuts, it is.

    Okay, more seriously, here's where it almost makes sense: if you don't cook that often, and you don't want to have half a this and a half a that left over, spoil, or go to waste, it sort of makes sense. If you have to buy an onion and a pepper of each color and a bunch of spices you're not going to use up for a long time, maybe $4.89 is actually not too bad of a deal for the pre-prepared ingredients in exactly the right amount.

    But it isn't at all practical for those of us in the regular habit of cooking and using ingredients efficiently.

  • Not to mention, if you're feeding more than two people, those packaged meals rely on tiny portions to "feed four," or whatever. How many packages would your family need, Jane? Three? Sheesh. How often do you spend $15.00 for a main course? Faron can down one of those packaged things by himself.

    But, as you say, Anne, if you try it on special and decide you all really enjoy it, chances are you'll buy it again. Some of those "gourmet" dry soup mixes that you see in gift shops are like this - incredibly overpriced.

    I'll pass.

    me<><

  • I think you pay for the convienence.

    Same with like, bread machine mixes. I just put together all the stuff vs. buying a mix and then I can say "I made this" without feeling like it came out of a box ;) I need to learn to make cakes from scratch too. I absolutely make cookies from scratch, not a fan of store bought or slice & bake. Cept Oreos, of course. Yum.

  • Here's another thing: there are a lot of people for whom it will be this, takeout, or some kind of other very expensive convenience or semi-prepared food, at least 4-5 times a week. Think of all the supermarkets with their new trend of displaying all the pre-cut vegetables and just-right for one meal amounts of meat next to each other. Well, maybe they don't do that everywhere, but around here it's a growing trend -- you set aside a refrigerator case with, for example, precut beef, precut chopped vegetables in a one-meal (for 4) amount, one-pound bags of rice, and bottles of stir-frying sauce on top. And next to that, you have chicken all rolled up with the ham and cheese for cordon bleu, 2-4 pieces per package. You're not going to get away with that one of those deals for less than the $8 or so it's going to cost to put one of those Archer Farms things together, either.

    So for a lot of folks for whom "eat as cheap as you can for the quality you want" just isn't an important value, this isn't really a bad deal at all. It's just a bad deal if you're actually trying to be economical.

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