Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Thanksgiving Mayhem!

My sister and I went shopping for some last-minute supplies after work. We decided to go to two places - our fave, Whole Foods, and the local Giant, which is much cheaper (no, I don't have to buy all-organic). If you are on eof those "I must buy organic!" people, godspeed to you. But just remember how much you're paying, if money is an object (looking at some of our necessities for tomorrow's big turkey day dinner):

Oranges: Whole Foods - $2 each, Giant - 3 for $1

Cupcakes: Whole Foods - $2.49 per each (though have you SEEN those cupcakes!?), Giant - about $1.50

Milk: Whole Foods - Oh, why even bother?, Giant - about $3 for a gallon

Again, the buffet was a draw for me - and the free samples all over the place. I love free cheese cubes! But my sister suggested we eat out. We went to the closest restaurant, our favorite - Chiu's Sushi. We paid $43 for our meal - and the place was not busy when we went. All we ordered this time was a tempura apetizer and a sashimi appetizer, and shared. Okay, we also ordered soda (for her) and sake (for me), plus soups and tempura ice creams. Minus all that, the price would have been a svelte $20. One new thing we had that we didn't have the last time: the dobbin soup. This soup is a seafood - mushroom - chicken soup served not in a bowl (like miso soup) but from a ceramic teapot with a lid that doubles as a little bowl. Tasty soup - certainly better than miso. It's also $4.95.

We wanted to grab some wine at Bin 604, also by the Whole Foods and Chiu's. We would have, were it not for the length of the line and the short time we had before our two hours free parking was up.

1 comments:

Karlonia said...

Ooooh, I love sushi! In my particular location (Corpus Christi, Texas), there are only two places that I know of where we can procure this little delicacy. One is a Japanese restaurant called the Tokyo Den, which mostly serves the same kinds of dishes that you described near the beginning of your post, and the other is at a supermarket called HEB.

Fortunately, our particular HEB store set up a small sushi bar about two years ago that employs approximately 2-4 Japanese employees that are skilled in the art of sushi preparation. They prepare the sushi fresh each day and pack it little plastic cartons of 10 pieces each and offer several different varieties at prices ranging from $4.59 to $9.99.

Interestingly, as far as overall value is concerned, the HEB sushi is usually a better deal because the Tokyo Den prices are relatively high, usually in the $14-$20 range for a comparable amount of food.