Blessed by the Potato

Some time ago I discovered that Quiznos did have very good sandwiches. I had put off trying them for years because I didn’t see the appeal of toasting a veggie sandwich, and figured it was mostly just a place for meat-eaters. Once I did try it and like it, I still didn’t go there very often because a sandwich there is $2 more than at Subway, so I usually only went when I had a coupon or really felt like going upscale. Then I think Quiznos started to try to cut costs or something, because the coupons stopped coming (even the crappier online coupons!) and the quality really took a nose-dive. In particular, it seemed like the bread just wasn’t as tasty any more, and a big reason for going was lost when they cancelled Wayfare’s favourite sandwich, the Tzatziki chicken. I have no idea why they discontinued that sandwich, it always seemed really popular, sometimes they’d even run out of tzatziki sauce. So, I stopped going entirely for pretty much all of the end of summer and the fall.

We just got another batch of coupons in the mail and decided to give them another try, plus Wayfare wanted to try their new “Sammie” mini pita thingies. It’s still not as good as I remember when I first got hooked on it, but the quality has come a huge way from where it was a few months ago. I noticed that my sandwich was toasted a lot better today, and wonder if that might have been part of the issue; the few subs I’d had before had been barely warmed by the heat, and it seems like their bread is just not very good cold. Wayfare liked her Sammie, which is just a tiny little thing, maybe 3 bites to it.

I was puzzled by their pricing scheme though, since it seemed to defy all usual retail sense. First off was the sammie pricing: $2 per sammie, or 2 for $3.99! Wow, I could save a whole penny? That’s pretty retarded. I know the sad thing is that it might convince some people to buy two just from putting the thought into their mind, but if I was going to buy a sammie, I’d probably just buy one, and then go up and reorder if I wanted a second, just to spite their stupid non-discount. They couldn’t have even made it 2 for $3.75 or something? It’s just so sad.

For their sub sandwiches, which form most of their business, the pricing is also really weird. Usually, there’s a lower incremental cost for an upgrade to try to entice a consumer into buying more, to upsell. The customer perceives a benefit of buying more, since the last bit of upgrade cost them less than the first bit, and the company makes more profit since it costs them less still to offer a bit more. This is something that’s generally true for companies selling food, including movie theatres, as well as other types of sales, such as long distance minutes. Not so for Quiznos, however. There, there isn’t much incentive to go beyond a 9″. A 6″ sandwich costs $5. A 9″ one costs $6, so the extra 3″ upgrade from the 6″ costs you a dollar. But a 12″ costs $7.50, so the 3″ to go from the 9″ to the 12″ costs $1.50, which goes against the usual upselling price points as well as the economies of scale. I wonder how many people just order a 12″ without considering that — I know I did, being in the habit of just ordering that size without really checking the price of the smaller ones. However, now that I know, it bugs me that they do that, possibly trying to wring that last 50 cents out of me, trying to just sneak it in, so I order a 9″ instead. Which is good, since a 9″ sub is just about the perfect lunch sized portion for me: 6″ is too small for my appetite, but with a 12″ it’s sometimes a struggle to stuff in that last bite or two. While the incremental cost to upsize to a 12″ out of whack, the total cost per inch of sandwich is still marginally less for the 12″. A 6″ sub is $0.83/inch, the 9″ is $0.66/inch, and the 12″ is $0.63/inch. It would make more sense to me to see that cost per inch go down more for the 12″, but at least it is lower so I don’t feel too bad when I do order a 12″, and it does leave some (very minor) justification for trying to upsell.

On The Fork is a high-end restaurant on the Forks of the Thames inside Museum London. I was thrown by this when trying to find it, I wasn’t expecting it to be inside the museum, way in the back. Museum admission is free, so this actually gave me an excuse to run quickly through a floor or two of it while waiting for the rest of our party to arrive. The view out the back is quite good, overlooking the forks of the Thames (hence the name) out behind the museum.

The waiter warned us right away that the portion sizes were quite small, and that there weren’t separate appetizers and entrees: instead, we were expected to order two (or three) items off the menu, and whichever was faster/easier/lighter would be brought out first. Everything is roughly “appetizer” sized, with a focus on presentation and style over portion size, though even after two plates and a dessert, some of our group was still hungry. This plan does allow for some variety (in fact, it’s a favourite of ours at Kelsey’s, where we can just order 3 appetizers to share instead of a main course) but also can make a meal get really unexpectedly expensive. Each dish ranged from $7 to $16, which is about what an entree costs at a more casual restaurant, so plan on a night at the Forks being about 2-3 times as much (which is not out of line with other upscale restaurants).

There were only 4 vegetarian options: a “warm salad” with goat’s cheese that didn’t sound, smell, or look very appealing to me; the gnocchi and tomato sauce; a very heavy creamy soup; and a squash ravioli which I figured would either be quite nice or be really grody. I played it safe and stuck with the gnocchi, and ordered it again for my second course, much to the disparagement of the waiter, who was quite a character (and really pushed a second course on me, even though I wasn’t very hungry). He was also very pushy when dessert time came around, really trying to sell everyone on a dessert, even though he didn’t really know what each option comprised (it was the first day with the new dessert menu).

On the Fork is definitely out of my usual price and haughtiness range, so I wouldn’t ordinarily recommend it. I also don’t think I would recommend it for dinner: for a larger meal, you’d be looking at most likely 3 dishes to satisfy, and that would just be ridiculously pricey. Plus, at night, the view of the forks wouldn’t be as good (AFAIK, there are no lights on the river) so half the attraction of the restaurant would be gone. If you do go there and are driving, be sure to check out the municipal lot directly in front of the museum doors first: we saw that it was pretty full and just went across the street to the ImPark lot, which ended up costing us $7.50 — while the municipal lot was quite full, there were about 3 spaces left as we walked through, and it would have only been $2.50 for the same time period!

A few months ago I got a coupon to buy some Becel Omega3Plus margarine, so I decided to give it a whirl. I’ve got to say I haven’t been very impressed. For the most part, it’s just like regular margarine (as you’d hope). You spread it on your toast, eat it, etc. But you get the benefit of having more variety of omega-3 fatty acids. While it seems to taste pretty much the same, it has what I find to be a really funny smell which often makes me change my mind and reach for the jam instead. My biggest complaint about it though is that it doesn’t seem to melt right when using it to cook with. Regular margarine (and butter) tend to melt and then bubble & foam when you have the frying pan at close to the right temperature, whereas this just seems to melt and then separate into a film with droplets in it, almost as if it were watered down or something.

Note that despite the marketing of this version as a source of Omega-3’s, original Becel margarine is also a source of Omega-3. In fact, both versions offer up 0.6 g per serving. The only difference is that the Omega3Plus version has all the different types of Omega 3 fats added in (ALA, DHA, EPA) which is probably better for you, while the original version doesn’t mention which source provides its Omega-3s (probably just ALA). The new Omega3Plus version also has fewer Omega-6 fatty acids (1.5 g vs 2 g) which is important; I believe the rule of thumb is that your diet overall should have about 4X as much Omega-6 as Omega-3, so a source of Omega-3’s (i.e.: something to bring the ratio back in line from our typical diet of 10X or more in favour of Omega-6) should have a lower ratio (here, 2.5X and 3.3X).

Since I’m really picky about my food having even slightly strange smells, I don’t think I’ll be buying the Omega3Plus version again, but if you don’t usually use your margarine for cooking with, you may not have any problem with it.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I seem to have lost the ability to cook recently. I tried making tomato soup last week. I made it the same way I do every time: can of Campbell’s tomato soup concentrate, a can of milk. Stir, heat, add oregano and basil, enjoy. Except along the way I curdled the milk somehow, turning it into threads of cheese in the soup. Ewww. Then this week, with a new carton of milk, I gave it another go, and did the same thing. I figured it was just tomato soup, so I tried Kraft Dinner: gross. I don’t know what went wrong exactly, but the whole thing just tasted terrible. Maybe the milk’s bad, even in the new carton, I figure, so I make a batch of pasta instead… ok, that was edible, but not really very good.

Then, just after blogging about how I have magical “innate frugal budgeting skills” I pull out the receipts from the last two months and crunch the numbers to see how close we came to being on-budget. For a total household budget of ~$2800/mo* (it’s not that exact; generally we aim for $2500, and don’t panic as long as it’s not over $3000), we managed to come damned close to breaking $4000 in October. There are of course a number of extenuating circumstances: there were a lot of sales on things that we stocked up on (hello, Coke through to next spring; ah, Halloween candy, my old love…), and being Halloween we managed to buy over $100 worth of decorations, spent $200 on our costumes, and something like $50 on food for the party. Plus I got new tires for my car, and we went out for dinner every week through the month (3 separate special occasions fall in October, so that’s only one or two random date night or meet friends eat-outs). While I don’t have the hydro or gas bill for November yet, assuming they’re the same as October then November will come in about $450 under budget (we only ate out once, I was sick, so we only drove to Toronto once, and we had a lot of groceries stocked up after October). Of course, December is going to be rough because of the gift budget… and the summer months were slightly over due to our Ottawa and cottage trips. Maybe I’ll need to get back to budgeting basics for the new year!

So today I’m feeling kind of dumb for losing the ability to do such basic things that came so naturally to me for so long…

* – just for the curious, we don’t actually live on $2800/mo. There are a few things, such as gifts and my curling membership, that through lack of a receipt or just plain forgetfulness never seem to make it into the budget reports. Those probably add $1000 or so for the year. Plus my parents help out a fair bit: we’re on the family’s car insurance, so my dad pays for that (which I’m told is very cheap for a car stationed in London), my dad pays for any dental work not covered by my insurance (and with two crowns this year, that is most welcome!), my dad says “take Wayfare somewhere nice” and will pay for a restaurant meal for us (which I tried to refuse at first, but hey, he’s got the stubbornness gene in full-force, whereas I only got one allele). That’s not even counting all the little things, like “borrowing” vacuum bags or movies from the ‘rents (I haven’t bought a DVD in 16 months). If I had to guess, I’d say our actual monthly budgets would come out closer to $3300 if we were really out on our own.

It was kind of a shock when Eastown Pizza closed down, as they had some pretty good, fairly unique pizza (though it was a little pricey for the university crowd). Shortly after they closed, a new joint opened up in their space by the campus: Mustang Pizza. I was hoping that they managed to get some of the equipment and recipes from the bankruptcy, and that I could still get Eastown pizza, just under a new name. It’s been a few months, but I finally went out and gave them a try tonight.

Oh my god, they are terrible. I was quite hungry after rushing around to send off a grant today, and I couldn’t even finish a slice, it was just that bad. The crust had a decent flavour, but was far too thin to support the rest of the pizza (bring a spoon), and was very, very soggy. The worst part by far though was the cheese. It was basically cheese slice cheese. It gooped up far more than pizzeria cheese should, and stuck to my fingers when I tried to pick a bit off. This thing was drowning in this terrible cheese, there was about twice as much cheese as there was crust.

So, heed my warning and stay away from Mustang Pizza.