"Let's go out for lunch," my husband, Steve, suggests on a rainy spring Saturday as soggy as breakfast corn flakes. "This coupon for Pigout Buffet expires today. Buy one get one free."
"Two pigouts for the price of one⢠Can't waste that one," I say, shoving the peanut butter and jelly back into the fridge.
Because that's how it works, the coupon game. Use about-to-expire coupons first; table long-term offers. Forget Atkins and Pritikin, nutrition and the food pyramid. Welcome to the coupon diet, which ignores calories, fat, salt and cholesterol and counts only cents off.
"What expires next?" I ask, playing the game while wriggling into a parka. "Superpizza⢠Unsinkable Subs?"
"Pasta Paradise, free breadsticks and soda with large order."
"Yum," I say, "but don't you remember last time there were no empty tables, and I stood in a corner dribbling marinara on my yellow cashmere cardigan?"
"Serves you right. Who wears yellow cashmere for Italian?"
Point well taken. For today's pigout I trade my beige sweater for an old black sweatshirt.
The Pigout is tucked into a mall food court overrun with teenagers on a weekend, the decibel level amped beyond human reckoning. After draping our jackets on chair backs to stake out a deuce, we scrutinize the Pigout's array of salads, sodden vegetables and meat concoctions disguised by brown gravy. Cornbread and beverage are included, no tipping.
For a vegetarian like me, pigging out on this stuff is a challenge. I settle for garden salad, watery mashed potatoes and green beans grayed from overcooking. Steve plows into the Hungarian beef, which looks just like the Parmesan chicken, which is indistinguishable from the homestyle pork cutlet.
"Umm," he mumbles without conviction after the first forkful.
After gnawing the second bite for three minutes, he abandons the meat and forks his gravy, now congealed to the consistency of crankcase sludge.
"Why don't we try that early bird at Maxim's Palace tonight⢠Half price for seniors before 5 p.m.," he says.
I quit sopping cornbread into my mashed potatoes in a quest for flavor and put my foot down as well as my fork.
"Forget it! When do we eat what we've got at home⢠What about all those double coupon deals from Food Princess⢠I was planning veggie burgers. We got $1 off on a pack of four."
"Tofu's against my religion," he argues.
Yeah, right, the man worships at the altar of meat and potatoes. He craves sacrificial lamb, filet of sacred cow. Then why did he insist on buying veggie burgers?
You see the problem⢠There are so many deals, so little time, so many excuses not to eat those great double-coupon bargains like meatless meatballs and scalloped rutabaga.
The rules of the coupon game are simple. A roll of the dice gets you Great Supermarket Buys or Sensational Dining Deals. Instead of building hotels on Boardwalk, you stock the pantry. Rather than profit from your investment you pig out at the Pigout. Unused coupons, like unpaid traffic tickets, send you directly to jail. Do not pass "Go."
The aim of the game is to save money while eating out more often, but the bottom line shows pantry and freezer bulging in inverse ratio to a shrinking cash balance.
This is saving?
I tell Steve we need to stop the bleeding, truss the ruptured budget before we blow our retirement savings. If it's not on our list, don't buy it regardless of cents-off or coupon doubling.
"Remember that free stalk of celery last month⢠It got so limp I threw it away."
"You should have made celery soup."
"You don't like celery soup," I remind him.
"But it was a deal."
This week's freebie at Food Princess is frozen cauliflower, buy one get one free. Steve hates cauliflower even more than celery. Maybe I can disguise it with that cheese sauce on sale.
Thrift is a virtue, of course and, in a tight economy, it's wise to sniff out deals. But coupons wagging the shopper skew the game toward stupid choices and blown budgets. At our house, for instance, after the Sunday morning ritual of sorting out ad sections, scissors cuts paper, activating that new Law of Consumer Dynamics: "Nature abhors a wasted coupon."
I confront Steve. "What are we going to do about this stack of restaurant deals when we've got more groceries stockpiled than a squirrel's got nuts?"
He riffles through the pile, rearranging coupons by expiration date. "Dinner at Sage 'n Cajun tomorrow," he says, "half price for the second meal."
It's a good thing the Scouts are having a food drive month. I'll donate everything we don't really enjoy. And, oh yes, I'd better add antacids to the shopping list.
